Pay more, work longer and get less

On top of a pay freeze, rising inflation and the threat of redundancy, public sector workers now face a pensions raid. The Hutton Report is a Trojan horse to attack public sector pensions and make public sector workers pay the price for the excesses of the bankers.
The report recommends that:

Staff contributions to increase by up to 50% – This was announced by the ConDem
government last year before the report was released. Increased contributions will not go into your pension schemes, they will go to plug a funding gap caused by cuts. This is a direct tax on public sector workers to bail out the banks!

The retirement age to be increased – for some people this could increase to 68!

Pensions to be calculated on your career average salary rather than your final salary.

There should be a cap on employer contributions – this means that any increase in
pension costs will be put directly on staff in the scheme.

Workers who are outsourced should not be allowed to be members of the scheme.

Increases in pensions should be linked to the lower CPI measure of inflation
rather than the RPI measure of inflation.

The report also makes some recommendations which UNISON would welcome such as greater transparency and access to information relating to the pension schemes.

There is a lot of mis-information surrounding public sector pensions. Public sector
pensions are not gold plated, with the average in local government being £4,000 a year
and this falls to £2,800 for women.

Public sector pension schemes make more money than they pay out and they are entirely sustainable, having only been renegotiated in 2006. If we didn’t save for a decent pension we would have to rely on benefits in retirement which would cost the taxpayer more in the long term. It’s worth noting that over £100billion is invested by public sector pensions in the UK which supports the economy.

UNISON is committed to defending good public services and decent pensions for all.